The joy of time-skips (RPG Blog Carnival )

Of Dice and Dragons themselves give us this months prompt Time, both in world and above the table, for the RPG Blog Carnival.

I have gotten a fair few strategies to make the real-world clock run - from 'run with 3' roster games, regular time slots, and a lot of practice with the same Friday-night open table time slot. That much I feel I have an approach, even if life still curb-stomps it from time to time.

In game time though. That still challenges me - specifically downtime and the prying loose players white-knuckled grip on the hour-glass.

I had one great experience recently where in the Hexcrawl 25 campaign the players wandered into a wizards tower held in temporal stasis and decided to thermite the widge that was making time pass very slowly inside. This effectively tossed them four and a bit years into the future which was just great as a DM.

One player of the roster was still out and active for that four years and they, coincidentally, moonlighted as the local postman so they have four whole years of beefing up their local reputation and putting about whatever legends they wanted. That very, very extended downtime activity for them basically set the backdrop for the rest of the campaign.

The rest of the players got to come out and find how things had changed, see the consequences of their actions on the map and have that sense of making a difference. Cannot recommend enough, wish I could pull such big time jumps off more.

I had a pretty coherent faction map when the time skip happened so it was relatively straight forward to run through how the dominos fell for all the various bits of the map, but should it happen to you unexpectedly then you can roll up some change to each place you come to below.

d20 Things changed after a significant time-skip
1. New realm splintered from old one, same archetype
2. Expansion of realms / shifting borders
3. Border reivers domains moved
4. Unsealed horrors
5. Splinter faction of invaders
6. Domino conflicts
7. Conflicts no longer restrained
8. Revolutionary realms
9. Reenergised rebellions
10. Replacement of activities (undead > laborers)
11. New gods shrines
12. Rejuvenation of conqueror realms
13. 'Golden road' of loot caravans
14. Populations altered in known locations
15. New settlements
16. Ruined / converted fortifications
17. New catspaws for old villains
18. Cultural mores changed in known places
19. Orphaned faction finding new motivations
20. Old foes made peace